Chapter 9
Last night was as unexpected as everything has been since meeting Thea. I was in the security room, watching the screens because one of my dealers reported someone was possibly slipping cards in at one of the poker tables. I recognized Thea as soon as I saw her. It was the same time the guy sat down next to her. I watched him, not wanting to cause a scene if I didn’t have to. But I radioed Todd to get closer. When he told me the guy was trying to brush up against her, I decided I would deal with it personally. So, I did.
I got to Dillan’s this morning after I scheduled breakfast to go up to her suite. She’s probably just waking up since it’s not even nine yet. I made sure she knows check out at eleven doesn’t apply to her. They can stay as long as they like, and everything is comped.
“Finn?”
“Yeah. I’m here. Where are you?”
I can hear Dillan, but his new house is fucking huge. They’ve furnished most of it, but it’s still empty enough that sound echoes in some parts.
“We’re in the sunroom. Grab something to eat and join us.”
I head into the kitchen and make a bowl of cereal. Dillan and I have been eating the same brand of granola since we were in high school. I look in the fridge.
What the feck is this shite?
Oat milk? Gross.
I pick up the carton and shake it. There’s not much left. I look farther into the fridge and find the gallon of whole milk. That’s better. Once I have a spoon, I head out to the sunroom that’s attached to the kitchen at the opposite end of the dining room.
Mair tries to get off Dillan’s lap, but he pins her in place. I want to roll my eyes. I know exactly why he doesn’t want his pretty bride to stand up right now. It’s not entirely sweet. It makes me think of Thea, and that just makes me hurry to sit down before I’m in the same boat as my cousin.
“How’d things go last night?” Dillan’s question is genuine. It means he hasn’t gotten the morning report yet.
“There were two incidents at Tropicals last night, but everything was quiet.”
“I wouldn’t let Ally hear you call her an incident.”
Well, feck me. I guess he did get the report. I’ll have to thank Sean for crowing at dawn like a fucking rooster. He’s in charge of all our security systems at every business we own. He’s got our places bugged better than every foreign embassy in America. He’s also our intelligence collector. I can hack and program, but he’s the super sleuth. He might not work for the government, but he puts his degree in national security to use. In many ways, our family governs a small empire. So, running it isn’t entirely different from running an oligarchy.
It is an oligarchy.
We need to be on top to stay on top. That means knowing more about everyone else than they know about us. We might not know the last time the Pope shat, but we know just about everything else. We let the other syndicates think we’re barely above dirt farmers and kneecap busting dock workers. They know there’s just as many of us with Ivy League educations as in the other families, but they forget that when they see the personas we want them to see. They think we paid our way in while the rest of them earned their places in those hallowed halls. Let them. It’s convenient.
“She isn’t an incident. The douche who bothered her is. I dealt with that and the guy trying to trade out cards. He was sly and good, but he didn’t realize we have cameras at each table. It was easy to see.”
We have them to keep the dealers honest and to keep an eye on the patrons. I’m glad Sean insisted upon them. I didn’t want to approve the expense. I thought it was exorbitant, but he’s proved me wrong many times over. Every once in a while, my baby brother gets it right.
I change the topic because I don’t want it going back to Thea. I’m not ready to talk about her, and Mair is way too perceptive. She’s a journalist and can sniff a lie from a mile away.
“Is everything squared away with the rugs?”
I can mention it in front of Mair because they’re items we’re bringing into the country legally. What she doesn’t know is what we have stitched into them. They’ll be unwoven to get to the nanochips disguised in the patterns.
“Shane said he tracked them to Indonesia. They got on the wrong freighter.”
I cock an eyebrow.
“It was a legit fuck-up.”
It would have cost us millions and put a strain on our relationship with one of the Triads in Hong Kong. We hadn’t yet taken possession of the cargo. It was on one of their ships when it went missing. We sure as fuck aren’t paying until we have the goods. Our refusal is justified, but they won’t like it. But I’m not paying a penny until the goods are ours, and I have the customs declarations to prove it.
“I need to get to work, Dill.” Mair stands up, and Dillan swings his legs under the table.
She bends to give him a kiss, and I think his eyes might roll back in his head as he peeks down his wife’s blouse. Fucking worse than a sixteen-year-old. But it’s cute. Losing his sister really fucked with him. They were as close as my twin brothers in many ways. She was a year and a half younger, but they were totally in sync. I pulled his head out of his arse more times than we’ve admitted to anyone while he was grieving. He and I have always been closest to each other, but it wasn’t until we lost Colleen that Dillan and I became practically inseparable.
Mair gives him a lot of the balance he lost when Colleen was murdered. I have a feeling he tells his wife more than he probably should, but he did the same thing with Colleen. He trusted his sister’s advice, and he trusts his wife’s. He’s not wrong, even if that trust was highly questionable at first.
“I love you. Have a good day.”
I can’t hear Dillan call Mair cailín, but I can read his lips. They exchange a quick kiss, then we’re alone. I keep eating my cereal, waiting for what I know is coming.
“You won’t like what Sean found.”
“There wouldn’t be anything to dislike if you hadn’t insisted on the background check.”
“Yeah, well after what happened with Mair, call me justifiably paranoid.”
Shane’s background check was thorough, but not as deep as it could have been when Mair applied to be a waitress at 4Play. We didn’t know her real background until shite hit the fan. By then, she and Dillan were halfway in love. Fortunately, finding out what we did made it easier for us to accept her. If we’d learned her full history first, they might not be together. Blessings in disguise, I suppose.
“Is it something dire?”
“No.”
“Is it something that’ll likely come out through the course of dating her?”
“Probably.”
“Then don’t tell me until it becomes necessary. I’d rather get to know Thea on my own like a normal guy.”
“Fine. Do you want a detail assigned to her?”
“Yes.”
I stare at Dillan. It’s a natural question, and he knows I was going to request it today. But something gives me the feeling that him asking so quickly is a hint that she might need the bodyguards. My hand curls tightly around my spoon, but I don’t press my suspicions. He’ll tell me if whatever he knows becomes a genuine threat.
“Consider it done.”
“I have news about Hollands and Spiegel.”
Director Hollands of the FBI and Agent Spiegel of the ATF are more than just brothers-in-law. So very much more, and Hollands’ sister— Spiegel’s wife —hasn’t a clue that while the cat— her —is away, the mice —them —play with each other.
We’re keeping their secret in exchange for them helping us with a little project. We had our sights set on causing trouble for Lorenzo, Maria’s next oldest brother, in Chicago. It worked, but it didn’t last nearly long enough. He resolved it without too much fuss. Annoying.
Now we’re setting in motion our plan for Marco, Maria’s second oldest brother. The FBI and ATF would love nothing more than to get their rocks off by busting our families. They know they don’t have nearly enough evidence to go after the leaders, so Dillan, Salvatore, Maksim, and Enrique are safe.
They know going after the heirs or seconds-in-command isn’t wise either. That leaves me out. Luca— Maria’s oldest brother and Salvatore’s oldest nephew —therefore his heir —is also out. Aleksei, the second oldest Kutsenko brother, is Maksim’s second and heir until he decides what to do when his toddler son gets old enough to join. Pablo is Enrique’s oldest nephew and heir. He’s safe too.
Marco is the perfect mark. He’s the third highest ranking member of the family, if you exclude his father. His dad’s the family’s consigliere. He’s also Salvatore’s younger brother. He’s the chief advisor and not in the line of succession. He’d be a good person to snag but getting him won’t weaken the Mancinellis as much as it will taking out a young man who could wind up running the Cosa Nostra one day. Luca only has an infant daughter.
We’re putting a lot of resources behind this, but Marco’s fucking shite up by dating Lorenzo’s new sister-in-law. Two sisters with two brothers. Sounds pretty familiar. They’re fucking inseparable. We don’t want the bust to go down when she’s anywhere near him. The goal isn’t to scoop her up too. But now that the ATF and FBI have the scent, they’re baying at the moon. We still have a leash on them, but they’re tugging.
NYC isn’t as big a city as people think. Not when it comes to who you know. We have a new stockbroker who handles most of our trading, but not all of it. The shite I want really kept secret— the billions of dollars of rainy-day money —doesn’t get touched by anyone but me. It’s routed through so many offshore shell accounts I’d forget where it was if I didn’t have an eidetic memory. This new stockbroker is none other than Lorenzo’s new brother-in-law. Yup. The two sisters have a brother who works for us. He also does some odd jobs for the Kutsenkos he thinks no one knows about. Of course, we do.
He”s still on probation, so I’ve given him enough money to earn us some good returns and to think he can hurt us if he runs with it. He thinks he knows more about our portfolios than he does. He has just enough rope to hang himself.
My cousins hated playing Monopoly with me. When I was almost ten, and Maria was almost seven, we were both sidelined from soccer. I had a broken wrist, and she had a sprained ankle. We had to go to games with our siblings and cousins, but it was boring. She brought Monopoly one Saturday afternoon. Our parents watched each other like hawks, but they didn’t stop us from playing together. I explained the rules to her, and she got it right away.
Within half an hour, we completely forgot there was anyone around or that we were at a soccer match. We were so engrossed in being real estate moguls. It ended in a draw when it was time to go. We both thought we were so smart when we pulled out our cash. We were definitely fucking smart. But we were the same kind of smart.
We each had cash we let each other see. We had cash we hid behind our backs that we could draw from, thinking the other hadn’t kept count. Then there was money we were sitting on that we never touched. When we added it all up, we had exactly the same amount of cash and our properties with houses and hotels were worth the same.
We were both back in the game two weeks later, and I was home with a cold in between. We never played anything together again, but we used to laugh about it in school because I’m three years ahead of her. We were both our class treasurer throughout middle and high school.
Steven, the stockbroker, only gets the money we want him to see. He thinks he knows what’s in the stash I’ll pull from. He has no idea about the money I’m sitting on. We’ll see if he passes the test.
“Earth to Finn.”
“Huh?”
“Hello. You’re not even fecking listening, are you? Thinking about a particular green-eyed angel?”
“Actually, no. I was thinking about how Steven could become a problem if his sister gets caught up in the shite with Marco. I want Sean to warn him off. Tell him his family needs to get away from the Mancinellis. They get one friendly heads up, and that’s it. But give them the chance to keep her out of the FBI’s and the ATF’s crosshairs.”
“I talked to Sean this morning. He thinks Tres J’s wants to target Marco, too. I don’t know if they got a whiff of us or if lightning struck twice, and they had an original thought among them. We can let them take the fall for this and let them face Marco. But if they get in the way, they’ll feck up months of planning.”
“Shouldn’t they still be at their aunt’s hospital bed? I heard it’s dire.” Dillan and the rest of us can be sympathetic to a point, especially when it’s about one of the moms.
“From what I heard, it is. I don’t know if the cancer’s terminal, but that’s the feeling I got.”
“Did our moms send anything round to them?”
“Yeah. They took over some meals a few weeks ago. I’ll remind mine, and she’ll set something up with yours and Aunt Saoirse to send some more stuff soon.”
Women and children were supposed to be off limits. It was an unwritten law for generations. The shite was supposed to be between the men. But Uncle Donovan and Declan fucked that up and opened a door no one’s been able to shut. The Kutsenkos think it started with them, but it didn’t. It started with Colleen. Declan’s the reason she’s dead. His own death couldn’t have happened to a more deserving piece of shite.
Mrs. Diaz used to bring tres leches cake to games for any kid’s birthday, regardless of their family. She used to slip me extra frosting when my mom wasn’t looking. It was fine because my mom used to give Mrs. Diaz’s younger son pieces of brownie. That shite bag is dead too thanks to the Kutsenkos. He deserves a seat next to Declan in hell.
That’s the sort of fucked-up world I grew up in. We played kids’ sports together. Our moms and dads were the snack parents. We celebrated birthdays together until each boy turned twelve. Then we got knives to stab each other with. Saturdays and Sundays were truce days because other families were around. The men got along for the sake of the women and children.
My family fucked it up and ruined that. We’re doing what we can to restore the old way, but it’s like trying to build a snowman during an avalanche.
However, our moms will still do the right thing. They will have safe passage to the Diazes’ house in Jersey to drop off enough food to feed all of them for a month. They know it’s not much, but if it makes it one less thing for Mrs. Diaz to worry about, then it’s worth it. If we hadn’t thought Maksim would throw anything they brought over straight in the trash, they would have taken food to Laura when she had the twins.
People think we’re completely devoid of all ethics. That we’re morally gray on our best days but morally black most of them. But they don’t understand the world we live in. There are exacting standards for behavior, and codes of conduct that should never be violated. Once they are— well, our family is proving it’s damn near impossible to regain respect once it’s lost.
“Finn? For feck’s sake. Could you pay attention?”
“I was thinking about Margherita. If that happened to one of our moms, do you think the other families would send anything to us?”
“Yes.”
That was an immediate answer. I sigh and nod.
“I’ll text Sean and tell him to make the call. Once I know he’s spoken to Steven, I’ll get things going for the bust.”
“Fine. I want to go over the rental properties in Maine.”
Dillan and I spend the next hour discussing the property taxes and real estate investments we have with some vacation rentals along the coast in northern Maine. That money’s part of the pot no one outside the family knows about because I never touch it. I have it going to a Swiss account to silently accumulate compound interest.
Once Seamus and Cormac arrive, we spend another two hours discussing various legal issues. We have some men awaiting indictment who Seamus’s representing. The DA’s dragging their feet now that they know Seamus’s involved personally. There’s some issue over exculpatory evidence. Cormac’s handling three big acquisitions we have going on in Poland. The Polish here in NYC are cooperating because they know we’ll go after their families in their mother country and just take what we want if they try to dick us over here.
I head home to run some monthly PL statements. I find an account that isn’t reconciling within my five-cent standard deviation limit. I use my own program I designed. There isn’t a chance I’m using some commercial accounting software that’s easy to hack. My shite’s encrypted to the moon thanks to Sean. I find the entry error I made two weeks ago. I don’t know what I was doing to distract me, but I inverted two numbers. I make mistakes, but it’s rare. By the time I’m done, it’s midafternoon, and I still don’t know what Thea wants to do.
Me
Did you have an enjoyable morning?
I don’t expect an immediate response, but five minutes turns into ten turns into twenty turns into an hour-and-a-half. Am I getting the blow off?
Thea
I’m so sorry. I just saw this. I’m at the gym. I missed it vibrate, so I didn’t check to see if anything came through. I had a glorious morning. That was the best breakfast I’ve had since I was in the UK a couple years ago. How’s your day going?
I like that she asks. I know it’s a common question, but I appreciate that she cares enough to ask.
Me
Busy with work. Lots of numbers floating in front of my eyes. Are we still on for tonight?
Thea
Yeah. I had an idea but
I wait to see if there’s more, but nothing comes.
Me
???
Instead of a text, my phone rings.
“Thea?”
“I don’t know how this works. Are there things I shouldn’t— can I —um —are our calls and texts private?”
She wants to know if someone’s tapping my phone. Not an unreasonable question.
“I’m home, so we’re fine to talk about whatever you want.”
We have technology to jam anyone trying to listen in when we’re in our homes and vehicles.
“I had an idea, but I don’t know if you’d be into it. I don’t know if it’s?—”
“I’ll tell you if it’s something I don’t want to do.”
“I just don’t know if I’d offend you to suggest it.”
Now I’m really curious.
“I’m worried it might be too much like some of your— work. I —I don’t want to make assumptions. But I also don’t want?—”
“Thea, just tell me. I won’t be upset by whatever it is. I don’t like you being scared to tell me something. Especially something you want.”
“I want to go ax throwing, but is it too much like your work?”
The entire sentence came out as basically one long word. I try not to laugh because she won’t understand why I am. I get why she’s worried. I’ve never taken an ax to anyone. I have used bone saws, though.
“That sounds like fun. Is there a place around here?”
“There’s one in Queens. I looked it up. Finn, is this really okay? I don’t want to make you do anything?—”
“Thea.” I infuse command into my tone.
“Yes, D?—”
I can practically hear her teeth clack as she cuts herself off. What was she going to say?
“What time do you want me to pick you up?”
“I can be ready at six.”
I glance at my watch. An hour and a half. That’s going to feel like an eternity.
“Sounds good.”
It’s long enough to jack off a couple times, so I don’t maul her the moment I see her. What didn’t she let herself say?